Language Teaching Methods VU

Course Outline

Course Title: Language Teaching Methods

Credit Hours: 3(3+0)

Course Level: Masters

Lesson No.

Lesson No.

Page No.

Lesson 1.

Language: Some Theoretical Concepts

3-19

Lesson 2.

A Brief History of LTM

20-31

Lesson 3.

Difference in Theory, Approach, Method and Technique

32-51

Lesson 4.

The Context of English language and LTM in Pakistan- Part 1

52-58

Lesson 5.

The Context of English Language and LTM in Pakistan- Part 2

59-62

Lesson 6.

Grammar Translation Method  

63-68

Lesson 7.

The Direct Method

69-74

Lesson 8.

Audio-lingual Method

75-104

Lesson 9.

Total Physical Response Method

105-114

Lesson 10.

The Silent Way

115-125

Lesson 11.

Community Language Learning

126-137

Lesson 12.

Suggestopedia

138-147

Lesson 13.

Whole Language Method

148-156

Lesson 14.

Multiple Intelligence Method

157-168

Lesson 15.

Neurolinguistic Programming

169-178

Lesson 16.

The Lexical Approach

179-189

Lesson 17.

Competency Based Language Teaching

190-201

Lesson 18.

Communicative Language Teaching Approach

202-221

Lesson 19.

The Natural Approach

222-239

Lesson 20.

Cooperative Language Learning

240-253

Lesson 21.

Content Based Instruction

254-269

Lesson 22.

Task Based Language Learning

270-294

Lesson 23.

The Post Methods Era and Language Teaching Methods

295-310

Lesson 24.

Language Teaching Methods for Bilinguals

311-334

Lesson 25.

Language Teaching Methods in English for Specific Purposes (ESP)

335-348

Lesson 26.

Teaching Vocabulary in a Language Classroom

349-362

Lesson 27.

Teaching Pronunciation in a Language Classroom

363-371

Lesson 28.

Teaching Speaking in a Language Classroom

372-386

Lesson 29.

Teaching Listening in a Language Classroom

387-400

Lesson 30.

Teaching Reading in a Language Classroom

401-413

Lesson 31.

Teaching Writing in a Language Classroom

Lesson 32.

Integrating Language Skills

Lesson 33.

Lesson Planning and Language Teaching

Lesson 34.

Designing Instructional Materials

Lesson 35.

Digital Media in Language Teaching

Lesson 36.

Promoting Learner Autonomy

Lesson 37.

Syllabus Design for a Language Teaching Course

Lesson 38.

Assessment in Language Teaching

Lesson 39.

Teacher Training and Language Teaching Methods

Lesson 40.

Research and Language Teaching Methods

Lesson 41.

Recapitualting and Exploring Future Directions

Lesson 1

LANGUAGE: SOME THEORETICAL CONCEPTS

Topic- 001: Defining Language

“A definition of language,” observed the British cultural critic, Raymond Williams, “is always, implicitly or explicitly, a definition of human beings in the world” (1977, p. 21).

Significance of Language:

Language permeates every aspect of human experience, and creates as well as reflects images of that experience. It is almost impossible to imagine human life without it. And yet, we seldom think about it. We are oblivious of its ubiquitous presence in and around us, just as the fish is (or, is it?) unmindful of the water it is submerged in. Even those who systematically study language have not fully figured out what it is.

A case in point: After brilliantly synthesizing both Western and non-Western visions of language developed through the ages, the leading French linguist and psychoanalyst, Julia Kristeva (1989, p. 329) ends her erudite book on language with the humbling phrase: “that still unknown object—language.”

(Adapted/ Source: Kumaravadivelu B. (2008), Understanding Language Teaching From Method to Post Method, ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey London pp. 3-24)

(Adapted/ Source: Susan M. G. and Larry S. (2008), Second Language Acquisition: An introductory Course, Third edition, Routledge, pp.1-6.)

Topic- 002: Some Theoretical Concepts: Language as a System

Although there are endless debates on what constitutes language: for the limited purpose of understanding its relevance, concepts and precepts: we may look at it from three broad conceptual vantage points: language as system, language as discourse, and language as ideology.

Here our focus is on language as a system.

Language as a System:

We all know that human language is a well-organized and well-crafted instrument. That is to say, all the basic components of a language work in tandem in a coherent and systematic manner. They are certainly not a random collection of disparate units. From one perspective, a study of language is basically a study of its systems and subsystems. By treating language as system, we are merely acknowledging that each unit of language, from a single sound to a complex word to a large text—spoken or written—has a character of its own, and each is, in some principled way, delimited by and dependent upon its co-occurring units. As we learn from any introductory textbook in linguistics, the core of language as a system consists of the phonological system that deals with the patterns of sound, the semantic system that deals with the meaning of words, and the syntactic system that deals with the rules of grammar. For instance, at the phonological level, with regard to the pattern of English, stop consonants are distinguished from one another according to their place of articulation (bilabial, alveolar, velar) and their manner of articulation (voiceless, voiced) as shown:

Bilabial Alveolar Velar

Voiceless /p/ /t/ /k/

Voiced /b/ /d/ /g/

These minimal sounds, or phonemes as they are called, have contrastive values in the sense that replacing one with another will make a different word as in pit–bit, or ten–den, and so forth.

Understanding the sound system of a language entails an understanding of which sounds can appear word-initially or word-finally, or which can follow which. It also entails an understanding of how certain sound sequences signify certain meanings. In the aforementioned example, the user of English knows that ten and den are two different words with two different meanings.

We learn from semantics that every morpheme, which is a collection of phonemes arranged in a particular way, expresses a distinct meaning, and that there are free morphemes that can occur independently (as in den, dance) or bound morphemes like plural -s, or past tense -ed, which are attached to a free morpheme (as in dens, danced).

Different words are put together to form a sentence, again within the confines of a rule-governed grammatical system. The sentence, The baby is sleeping peacefully, is grammatical only because of the way the words have been strung together. A change in the sequence such as Sleeping is the peacefully baby will make the sentence ungrammatical. Conversely, sentences that may have a grammatically well-formed sequence as in the well-known example, Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, may not make any sense at all. These examples show, in part, that “the nouns and verbs and adjectives are not just hitched end to end in one long chain, there is some overarching blueprint or plan for the sentence that puts each word in a specific slot”.(Pinker, 1994, p. 94).

Language as a system enables the language user to combine phonemes to form words, words to form phrases, phrases to form sentences, and sentences to form spoken or written texts—each unit following its own rules as well as the rules for combination. Crucial to understanding language, then, is the idea of systematicity. Language as a system, however, is much more complex than the description.. A true understanding of the complexity of language requires a robust method of analysis.

More than anyone else in the modern era, it is Chomsky who has persuasively demonstrated that language as a system is amenable to scientific analysis and, in doing so; he has elevated our ability to deal with language as a system to a higher level of sophistication. Chomsky (1959, 1965, and elsewhere) began by pointing out certain fundamental facts about language as a system. First and foremost, all adult native speakers of a language are able to produce and understand myriad sentences that they have never said or heard before. In other words, an infinite number of sentences can be produced using a finite number of grammatical rules. Second, with regard to the child’s first language acquisition, there is what Chomsky calls “the poverty of stimulus,” that is, the language input exposed to the child is both quantitatively and qualitatively poor but still the child is able to produce, in a short period of time, language output that is immensely rich. The stimulus (that is the language data) available to the child is impoverished in the sense that it has only a limited set of sentences among all possible sentences in a language, and a large number of grammatical types remain unrepresented in the data. Besides, the parents’ or the caretakers’ language addressed to the child may not be the best possible sample because it is full of hesitations, false starts, sentence fragments, and even grammatical deviations. But still, all children, except those who may have neurological or biological defects, acquire the complex language rapidly, and, more importantly, without any formal instruction.

The Chomskyan thought about these and other “logical problems of language acquisition” is essentially premised upon mentalism, which states that much of human behavior is biologically determined, and, language behavior is no exception. Positing the notion of “innateness,” Chomsky argues that human beings, by virtue of their characteristic genetic structure, are born with an “innate ability,” that is, with an “initial state” of “language faculty” in which general properties of language as a system are prewired.

Using this “prewired” system, children are able to distill and develop the complex grammatical system out of the speech of their parents and caretakers. The system that the child is born with is common to the grammars of all human languages, and hence Chomsky calls it “Universal Grammar.”

The Universal Grammar is a set of abstract concepts governing the grammatical structure of all languages that are genetically encoded in the human brain. It comprises principles and parameters. The way it is considered to work is that children, using the unconscious knowledge of Universal Grammar, would know the underlying universal principles of language; for instance, languages usually have nouns, pronouns, and verbs. They would also know their parameters; for instance, in some languages verbs can be placed at the end of the sentence, or in some languages, pronouns can be dropped when in the subject position, and so forth. Thus, based on the specific language they are exposed to, children determine, unconsciously, whether their native language (L1) allows the deletion of pronouns (as in the case of Spanish), or not (as in the case of English). Such unconscious knowledge helps children eventually to “generate” or create all and only grammatical sentences in their L1.

The abstract generative system of grammar that Chomsky has proposed (which he has frequently updated) is actually a theory of linguistic competence. He makes “a fundamental distinction between competence (the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language) and performance (the actual use of language in concrete situations)” (1965, p. 4) and he is concerned only with discovering the mental reality (i.e., competence) underlying the actual behavior (i.e., performance) of a speaker–hearer. He is very clear in emphasizing that his linguistic theory is primarily concerned with an ideal speaker–listener, in a completely homogeneous speech community who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of language in actual performance (Chomsky, 1965, p. 3). Clearly, the speaker-hearer which Chomsky is talking about is an artificially constructed idealized person; not an actual language user. In addition, as Lyons (1996, p. 30) pointed out, for Chomsky, “linguistic competence is the speaker–hearer’s tacit, rather than conscious or even cognitively accessible knowledge of the language-system.”

Chomsky’s theory of linguistic competence is actually a theory of grammatical competence. It should, however, be remembered that his term, linguistic competence, subsumes phonological, syntactic, and semantic subsystems. That is why the unconscious possession of this abstract linguistic competence helps native speakers of a language to discriminate well-formed sentences from ill-formed word-sequences as well as well-formed sentences that make sense from those that do not (see the previously given examples).

In the same way, native speakers of English can also identify the ambiguity in sentences like Visiting mother-in-law can be boring.

or tell who the agent is in structurally identical pairs like

John is easy to please.

John is eager to please.

In other words, linguistic competence entails a semantic component that indicates the intrinsic meaning of sentences. This intrinsic meaning is semantic meaning and should not be confused with pragmatic meaning, which takes into consideration actual language use, that is, the speaker– hearer’s ability to use utterances that are deemed appropriate in a particular communicative situation. As Chomsky clarifies, the notion of competence does not include actual language use: “The term ‘competence’ entered the technical literature in an effort to avoid the slew of problems relating to ‘knowledge,’ but it is misleading in that it suggests ‘ability’—an association I would like to sever” (Chomsky, 1980, p. 59).

By not considering the pragmatic aspect of language use in formulating his theory of linguistic competence, Chomsky is in no way dismissing its importance. For purposes of “enquiry and exposition,” he considers it fit “to distinguish ‘grammatical competence’ from ‘pragmatic competence,’ restricting the first to the knowledge of form and meaning and the second to the knowledge of conditions and manner of appropriate use . . .” (Chomsky, 1980, p. 224).

In other words, Chomsky is interested in looking at human language as a cognitive psychological mechanism and not as a communicative tool for social interaction. Those who do treat language as a vehicle for communication, find it absolutely necessary to go beyond language as a system and consider the nature of language as discourse.

(Adapted/ Source: Kumaravadivelu B. (2008), Understanding Language Teaching From Method to Post Method, ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey London pp. 3-24

(Adapted/ Source: Richards J. C. and Renandya W. A. (2002), Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice, Cambridge University Press. pp.5-26)

(Adapted/ Source: Alla, A. and Koshova L. (2010), Modern Aspects of English Language Teaching: Theory & Practice, Dnipropetrovsk. pp. 24-30)

Topic- 003: Some Theoretical Concepts: Language as Discourse

In the field of linguistics, the term discourse is used to refer to “an instance of spoken or written language that has describable internal relationships of form and meaning (e.g., words, structures, cohesion) that relate coherently to an external communicative function or purpose and a given audience/interlocutor” (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000, p. 4). The focus here is a connected and contextualized unit of language use. During the 1970s, discourse analysis began to gain grounds partly as a response to the dominance of the Chomskyan view of language as a system that focused mainly on disconnected and decontextualized units of phonology, syntax, and semantics. Although there are many who have made contributions to our understanding of language as discourse; here, we briefly consider the seminal works of Halliday, Hymes, and Austin.

Rejecting the Chomskyan emphasis on grammar, Halliday (1973) defined language as meaning potential, that is, as sets of options in meaning that are available to the speaker–hearer in social contexts. Instead of viewing language as something exclusively internal to the learner, as Chomsky does, Halliday views it as a means of functioning in society. From a functional perspective, he sees three metafunctions or macrofunctions of language: the ideational, the interpersonal, and the textual. The ideational function represents the individual’s meaning potential and relates to the expression and experience of the concepts, processes, and objects governing the physical and natural phenomena of the world around. The interpersonal function deals with the individual’s personal relationships with people. The textual function refers to the linguistic realizations of the ideational and interpersonal functions enabling the individual to construct coherent texts, spoken or written.

For Halliday, language communication is the product or the result of the process of interplay between the ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions of language. Through this interplay, the meaning potential of language is realized. Learning a language then entails “learning to mean.”

As the child interacts with language and language users, he or she begins to understand the meaning potential within the language, and develops a capacity to use it. It is only through meaningful interactive activities in communicative contexts that a learner broadens and deepens the capacity for language use. And, language use is always embedded in a sociocultural milieu.

That is why Halliday (1973) preferred to define meaning potential “not in terms of the mind but in terms of the culture” (p. 52). Unlike Halliday, who questions the Chomskyan notion of competence and seeks to replace it, Hymes seeks to expand it. For Chomsky, competence is a mental structure of tacit knowledge possessed by the idealized speaker–hearer, but for Hymes, it is that plus the communicative ability to use a language in concrete situations.

We have to account for the fact that a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences not only as grammatical but also as appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, and in what manner. In short, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by others. (Hymes, 1972, pp. 277–278)

And the way Hymes seeks to account for that fact is by positing the concept of communicative competence, which “is dependent upon both (tacit) knowledge and (ability for) use” (1972, p. 282).

Communicative competence consists of grammatical competence as well as sociolinguistic competence, that is, factors governing successful communication. Hymes (1972) identified these factors, and has used an acronym SPEAKING to describe them:

Setting refers to the place and time in which the communicative event takes place.

Participants refers to speakers and hearers and their role relationships.

Ends refers to the stated or unstated objectives the participants wish to accomplish.

Act sequence refers to the form, content, and sequence of utterances.

Key refers to the manner and tone (serious, sarcastic, etc.) of the utterances.

Instrumentalities refers to the channel (oral or written) and the code (formal or informal).

Norms refers to conventions of interaction and interpretation based on shared knowledge.

Genre refers to categories of communication such as lecture, report, essay, poem, and so forth.

These flexible, overlapping factors, which vary from culture to culture, provide the bases for determining the rules of language use in a given context. For Hymes, knowing a language is knowing not only the rules of grammatical usage but also the rules of communicative use. He makes that amply clear in his oft-quoted statement: “There are rules of use without which the rules of usage are useless.”

Because both Chomsky and Hymes accept and use the notion of competence, it is instructive to compare it in its broadest terms. Chomsky’s notion is limited to the tacit knowledge of formal linguistic properties possessed by the idealized speaker–hearer. Hymes’ notion goes well beyond that to include actual knowledge and ability possessed by the language user. Furthermore, Chomsky’s notion is biologically based, whereas Hymes’ is more socially based. “The former is purely individual, the latter is mainly social. The former concerns form; the latter concerns function. The former characterizes a state; the latter involves processes” (Taylor, 1988, p. 156). It is rather apparent, then, that Hymes brings a much wider perspective to the notion of competence, one that has more relevance for treating and understanding language as a vehicle for communication.

Yet another aspect of language communication that is relevant for our discussion here is the notion of speech acts. In his classic book, How to Do Things With Words, published in 1962, Austin, a language philosopher, raised the question What do we do with language? and answered, simply: We perform speech acts. By speech acts, he refers to the everyday activity of informing, instructing, ordering, threatening, complaining, describing, and scores of other such activities for which we use our language. In other words, language is an activity that we do in myriad situations and circumstances.

Of all the numerous phenomena of language, Austin asserts: “The total speech act in the total speech situation is the only actual phenomenon which, in the last resort, we are engaged in elucidating” (1962, p. 148, emphasis in original).

To elucidate Austin’s speech act theory in simple terms: Every speech act that we perform has three components, which he calls locution, illocution, and perlocution. The first refers to a propositional statement, the second to its intended meaning, and the third to its expected response. The act of saying something, in and of itself, is a locutionary act. It is no more than a string of words containing phonological (sounds), syntactic (grammar), and semantic (word meaning) elements put together in a systemically acceptable sequence. In performing a locutionary act, one often performs such an act as “asking or answering a question, giving some information or an assurance or a warning, announcing a verdict or an intention, pronouncing sentence, making an appointment or an appeal or a criticism, making an identification or giving a description, and the numerous like” (Austin, 1962, pp. 98–99).

The perlocutionary act is the effect or the consequence of an utterance in a given situation. To illustrate a speech act, take a simple and short utterance, Move it. Here the locutionary act is the act of saying move it meaning by move move, and referring by it to the object in question. If we assume an appropriate context, the illocutionary act in this case is an act of ordering (or, urging or advising, or suggesting, etc., in different contexts) somebody to move it.

The perlocutionary act, again assuming an appropriate context here, is the act of actually moving it. The most important component of a speech act is the illocutionary act.

For it to have what Austin calls illocutionary force, a speech act has to meet certain socially agreed upon demands or conventions. For instance, a statement like I now pronounce you man and wife has its intended illocutionary force only if it is uttered in a proper context (e.g., a church) and by a proper person (e.g., a priest). The same statement uttered by a clerk in a department store will not render two customers a married couple! The statement gains its illocutionary force only because of the situational context in which it is uttered and not because of its linguistic properties. Or, to quote Joseph, Love, and Taylor (2001):

The illocutionary force of an utterance is not part of meaning the words have simply in virtue of being those words. On the other hand, the illocutionary act is performed by or in rather than merely through using those words. The illocutionary force of an utterance is simultaneously both context-dependent and, in context, inherent in the uttering of the words themselves. (p. 103)

The key word in the above quote is context. It is also a key to language as discourse in general. In linguistics, discourse was initially defined as a unit of coherent language consisting of more than one sentence, to which was added a reference to language use in context. Combining these two perspectives, Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000) gave the definition quoted at the beginning of this section and repeated here for convenience:

Discourse “is an instance of spoken or written language that has describable internal relationships of form and meaning (e.g., words, structures, cohesion) that relate coherently to an external communicative function or purpose and a given audience/interlocutor” (p. 4). Some discourse analysts (e.g., McCarthy & Carter, 1994) go beyond internal relationships of form and meaning to include “the interpersonal, variational and negotiable aspects of language” (p. xii), and some others (e.g., G. Cook, 1994) include “a form of knowledge of the world” (p. 24) as well.

The added focus on context has certainly facilitated a useful connection between language structure and the immediate social context in which it is used. It has also aided, from a classroom discourse point of view, the study of the routines of turn-taking, turn sequencing, activity types, and elicitation techniques in the language classroom. However, a truly discourse-based view of language should have also considered “the higher order operations of language at the interface of cultural and ideological meanings and returning to the lower-order forms of language which are often crucial to the patterning of such meanings” (McCarthy & Carter, 1994, p. 38). And yet, most “mainstream” discourse analysts have found contentment in analyzing “the lower order forms of language” and leaving “the higher order operations of language” largely untouched. That challenging task has been recently taken up by critical discourse analysts who explore language as ideology.

(Adapted/ Source: Kumaravadivelu B. (2008), Understanding Language Teaching From Method to Post Method, ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey London pp.3-24).

Topic- 004: Some Theoretical Concepts: Language as Ideology

Ideology is “a systematic body of ideas, organized from a particular point of view” (Kress & Hodge, 1979, p. 6). Stated as such, it sounds rather simple and straightforward. As a matter of fact, ideology is a contested concept. Its reference and relevance cut across disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, political science, history, and cultural studies. Linguistics is a much belated and bewildered entrant, in spite of the fact that language and ideology are closely connected. Among the many interpretations of the concept of ideology, there is one common thread that unfailingly runs through all of them: its ties to power and domination.

In an authoritative book on Ideology and Modern Culture, Thompson (1990) defined ideology rather briskly as “meaning in the service of power” (p.7, emphasis in original). Therefore, “to study ideology is to study the ways in which meaning serves to establish and sustain relations of domination” (p. 56, emphasis in original). The best way to investigate ideology, according to Thompson, is to investigate the ways in which meaning is constructed and conveyed by symbolic forms of various kinds, from everyday linguistic utterances to complex images and texts; it requires us to investigate the social contexts within which symbolic forms are employed and deployed; and it calls upon us to ask whether, and if so how, the meaning mobilized by symbolic forms serves, in specific contexts, to establish and sustain relations of domination (1990, p. 7).

In a very succinct manner, Thompson has made the connection between language and ideology very clear. Expanding that connection, anthropologist Kroskrity (2000) suggested that it is profitable to think of language ideologies as a cluster of concepts consisting of four converging dimensions:

· First, “language ideologies represent the perception of language and discourse that is constructed in the interests of a specific social or cultural group” (p. 8). That is, notions of language and discourse are grounded in social experience and often demonstrably tied to the promotion and protection of political-economic interests.

· Second, “language ideologies are profitably conceived as multiple because of the multiplicity of meaningful social divisions (class, gender, clan, elites, generations, and so on) within sociocultural groups that have the potential to produce divergent perspectives expressed as indices of group membership” (p. 12). That is, language ideologies are grounded in social experiences that are never uniformly distributed across diverse communities.

· Third, “members may display varying degrees of awareness of local language ideologies” (p. 18). That is, depending on the role they play, people develop different degrees of consciousness about ideologically grounded discourse.Finally, “members’ language ideologies mediate between social structures and forms of talk” (p. 21). That is, people’s sociocultural experience and interactive patterns contribute to their construction and understanding of language ideologies. These four dimensions, according to Kroskrity, must be considered seriously if we are to understand the connection between language and ideology.

These four dimensions of language ideology are a clear echo of the broad-based concept of discourse that poststructural thinkers such as Foucault have enunciated. Foucault’s concept of discourse is significantly different from that of mainstream linguists. For him discourse is not just the suprasentential aspect of language; rather, language itself is one aspect of discourse. In accordance with that view, he offers a three-dimensional definition of discourse “treating it sometimes as the general domain of all statements, sometimes as an individualizable group of statements, and sometimes as a regulated practice that accounts for a number of statements”.(Foucault, 1972, p. 80).

The first definition relates to all actual utterances or texts. The second relates to specific formations or fields, as in “the discourse of racism” or “the discourse of feminism.” The third relates to sociopolitical structures that create the conditions governing particular utterances or texts. Discourse thus designates the entire conceptual territory on which knowledge is produced and reproduced. It includes not only what is actually thought and articulated but also determines what can be said or heard and what silenced, what is acceptable and what is tabooed. Discourse in this sense is a whole field or domain within which language is used in particular ways. This field or domain is produced in and through social practices, institutions, and actions. In characterizing language as one, and only one, of the multitude of organisms that constitute discourse, Foucault (1970) significantly extended the notion of linguistic text. A text means what it means not because of any inherent objective linguistic features but because it is generated by discursive formations, each with its particular ideologies and particular ways of controlling power. No text is innocent and every text reflects a fragment of the world we live in. In other words, texts are political because all discursive formations are political. Analyzing text or discourse therefore means analyzing discursive formations, which are essentially political in character and ideological in content. Such a concept of language ideology is usually reflected in the ideologically grounded perceptions and practices of language use that are shaped and reshaped by dominant institutional forces, historical processes, and vested interests. For instance, the preeminent cultural critic, Said (1978), in his book, Orientalism, presented compelling textual evidence from literary, historical, sociological, and anthropological texts produced by the colonial West to represent the colonized people. He uses the term Orientalism to refer to a systematically constructed discourse by which the powerful West “was able to manage—and even produce—the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively . . .” (Said, 1978, p. 3). It forms an interrelated web of ideas, images, and texts from the scholarly to the popular, produced by artists, writers, missionaries, travelers, politicians, militarists, and administrators, that shape and structure Western representations of colonized people and their cultures.

In yet another manifestation of the nexus between power and language, the French sociologist, Bourdieu (1991), in his book, Language and Symbolic Power, described symbolic power “as a power of constituting the given through utterances, of making people see and believe, of confirming or transforming the vision of the world and thereby, action on the world and thus the world itself . . .” (p. 170). He also showed the innumerable and subtle strategies by which language can be used as an instrument of communication as well as control, coercion as well as constraint, and condescension as well as contempt. He pointed out how variations in accent, intonation, and vocabulary reflect differential power positions in the social hierarchy. According to him, “what creates the power of words and slogans, a power capable of maintaining or subverting the social order, is the belief in the legitimacy of words and of those who utter them” (p. 170). In another work, Bourdieu (1977) invoked the notion of “legitimate discourse” and elaborated it by saying that “a language is worth what those who speak it are worth, so too, at the level of interactions between individuals, speech always owes a major part of its value to the value of the person who utters it” (p. 652).

“On a personal note, I was recently reminded of the significance of Bourdieu’s statement when I read the remarks of a prominent applied linguist, Larsen-Freeman, about her inventing a new word, grammaring. In explaining how she, as a native speaker of English, is empowered to invent new words, she says: The point is that as language teachers, we should never forget that issues of power and language are intimately connected. For example, it is unfair, but nevertheless true, that native speakers of a language are permitted to create neologisms, as I have done with grammaring. Such a coinage, however, might have been corrected if a nonnative speaker of English had been its author”. (Larsen-Freeman, 2003, p. 64)

One may take it as a gentle reminder that one, as a nonnative speaker of English does not have “permission” to coin a new word, and if one had coined one, it might have been corrected. It is unfair, but nevertheless true!

It is the unfair and true nature of language ideology that a group of linguists, who call themselves critical discourse analysts, attempt to unravel. By critically analyzing the systematic distortion of language use, they focus on the exploitation of “meaning in the service of power.” More specifically, as Fairclough (1995), in his introductory book, Critical Discourse Analysis, explained, critical discourse analysts aim to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power (p. 132). In the context of language ideology, they see power in terms of “asymmetries between participants in discourse events, and in terms of unequal capacity to control how texts are produced, distributed and consumed (and hence the shape of texts) in particular sociocultural contexts” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 1). Their working assumption is that any level of language structure and use is a relevant site for critical and ideological analysis. Their method of analysis includes description of the language text, interpretation of the relationship between the text and the discursive processes, and explanation of the relationship between the discursive processes and the social practices.

Recognizing the importance of critical discourse analysis, Pennycook (2001), in his book, Critical Applied Linguistics, has introduced a newly defined area of applied linguistic that seeks to take a critical look at the politics of knowledge, the politics of language, the politics of text, and the politics of pedagogy within a coherent conceptual framework. He has called for strengthening of critical discourse analysis by going beyond any prior sociological analysis of power and its connection to language, and by conducting linguistic analyses of texts to show how power may operate through language. His aim is to make the task of applied linguistics “to be one of exploration rather than of mere revelation” (p. 93). From an educational point of view, critical discourse analysts see language-teaching as a prime source for sensitizing learners to social inequalities that confront them, and for developing necessary capabilities for addressing those inequalities. Therefore, they advocate the creation of critical language awareness in our learners. Such a task should be fully integrated, not only with the development of language practices across the curriculum, but also with the development of the individual learner’s intellectual capabilities that are required for long-term, multifaceted struggles in various sociopolitical arenas. They, however, caution that instruction in critical language awareness “should not push learners into oppositional practices which condemn them to disadvantage and marginalization; it should equip them with the capacities and understanding which are preconditions for meaningful choice and effective citizenship in the domain of language” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 252).

Applying the principles of critical discourse analysis to explore the nature of input and interaction in the language classroom, we have questioned the present practice of conducting classroom discourse analysis that focuses narrowly on turn-taking, turn sequencing, activity types, and elicitation techniques. Here, it is argued that a true and meaningful understanding of sociocultural aspects of classroom discourse can be achieved not by realizing the surface level features of communicative performance or conversational style but only by recognizing the complex and competing world of discourses that exist in the classroom. (Kumaravadivelu, 1999a, p. 470)

(Adapted/ Source: Kumaravadivelu B. (2008), Understanding Language Teaching From Method to Post Method, ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey London pp.3-24).

Topic- 005: Language Teaching and Theoretical Concepts about Language

To understand the relationship between language teaching and theoretical concepts about language, we first need to think about the following:

· What do theories of language do?

· What purpose do they serve?

This leads to the understanding: how do theories of language relate to Language teaching?

In fact, history of language teaching and history of the study of language go side by side. The study of language addresses the teaching of language. The question arises HOW. The answer is simple: Theory helps to take a perspective; and this perspective addresses the perspective and practices of teaching. When a teacher believes in language as a certain kind of entity, it affects his or her way of thinking about language which in turn affects his or her way of thinking about how to teach language.

Lesson 2

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODS

Topic- 006: Language Teaching Methods Course and its Significance

The English language teaching tradition has been subject to tremendous change, especially throughout the twentieth century. Perhaps more than any other discipline, this tradition has been practiced, in various adaptations, in language classrooms all around the world for centuries. While the teaching of Maths or Physics, that is, the methodology of teaching Maths or Physics, has, to a greater or lesser extent, remained the same, this is hardly the case with English or language teaching in general. There are some milestones in the development of this tradition, which we need to briefly touch upon, in an attempt to reveal the importance of research in the selection and implementation of the optimal methods and techniques for language teaching and learning.

Language teaching methods refers to the set of teaching practices, approaches, and materials used by instructors to facilitate foreign language (FL) learning. Throughout history, methods have responded to the changing goals of language learning, for example, communicating with foreign trade partners, supporting missionary efforts to spread religion, reading academic scholarship and sacred texts, or, most recently, facilitating interaction on transnational and global levels. Language teaching methods therefore have prioritized different skills, for example, listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing, given the needs of learners and the values of societies. Various theoretical understandings of second language acquisition (SLA) and FL pedagogy have further informed teaching methods. In particular, new research developments, emphases, and trends in the related disciplines of linguistics, literature studies, education, and psychology have shaped thinking on the most effective ways to teach language.

Language teaching has been around for many centuries, and over the centuries, it has changed. Various influences have affected language teaching. Reasons for learning language have been different in different periods. In some eras, languages were mainly taught for the purpose of reading. In others, it was taught mainly to people who needed to use it orally. These differences influenced how language was taught in various periods. Also, theories about the nature of language and the nature of learning have changed. However, many of the current issues in language teaching have been considered off and on throughout history.

(Adapted/ Source: Brown, H. D. (2000) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New York: Longman)

(Adapted/ Source: Richards J. C. and Theodore S. (1999), Approaches and Methods In Language Teaching: A Description and Analysis, Rodgers, Cambridge University Press. pp. 1-13The History of Language Teaching Methodology)

(Adapted/ Source: old.ektf.hu/.../MA%20Integrated%20ELT%20M-The%20History%20of%20ELTword)

Topic- 007: Language Teaching Methods in Ancient Times

The history of the consideration of foreign language teaching goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. They were interested in what they could learn about the mind and the will through language learning. The Romans were probably the first to study a foreign language formally. They studied Greek, taught by Greek tutors and slaves. Their approach was less philosophical and more practical than that of the Greeks.

In the Western world back in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, foreign language learning was associated with the learning of Latin and Greek, both supposed to promote their speakers' intellectuality. At the time, it was of vital importance to focus on grammatical rules, syntactic structures, along with rote memorisation of vocabulary and translation of literary texts. There was no provision for the oral use of the languages under study; after all, both Latin and Greek were not being taught for oral communication but for the sake of their speakers' becoming "scholarly?" or creating an illusion of "erudition." Late in the nineteenth century, the Classical Method came to be known as the Grammar Translation Method, which offered very little beyond an insight into the grammatical rules attending the process of translating from the second to the native language.

Adapted/ Source: The History of Language Teaching Methodology www.old.ektf.hu/.../MA%20Integrated%20ELT%20M-The%20History%20of%20ELTword )

(Adapted/ Source: Brown, H. D. (2000) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New York: Longman.)

(Adapted/ Source: Richards J. C. and Theodore S. (1999), Approaches and Methods In Language Teaching: A Description and Analysis, Rodgers, Cambridge University Press. pp.1-13)

Topic- 008: Language Teaching Methods in Europe in Early Modern Times

In Europe, before the 16th century, much of the language teaching involved teaching Latin to priests. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, French was a lingua franca for speaking to foreigners. Members of the court spoke French, but it was also a necessary language for travelers, traders, and soldiers. French was fairly widely taught during this period, and a study of the theoretical books and language textbooks from this period indicate that many of the same questions that are being considered today by language teachers were being considered then. These included questions about practice versus learning rules and formal study versus informal use.

The status of Latin changed during this period from a living language that learners needed to be able to read, write, and speak, to a dead language which was studied as an intellectual exercise. The analysis of the grammar and rhetoric of Classical Latin became the model language teaching between the 17th and 19th centuries, a time when thought about language teaching crystalized in Europe. Emphasis was on learning grammar rules and vocabulary by rote, translations, and practice in writing sample sentences. The sentences that were translated or written by the students were examples of grammatical points and usually had little relationship to the real world. This method came to be known as the grammar-translation method. Though some people tried to challenge this type of language education, it was difficult to overcome the attitude that Classical Latin (and to a lesser extent Greek) was the most ideal language and the way it was taught was the model for the way language should be taught. When modern languages were taught as part of the curriculum, beginning in the 18th century, they were generally taught using the same method as Latin.

(Adapted/ Source: (The History of Language Teaching Methodology www.old.ektf.hu/.../MA%20Integrated%20ELT%20M-The%20History%20of%20ELTword )

Topic- 009: Language Teaching Methods in the 19th and Early to Mid-20th Century

The Grammar-Translation Method

The grammar-translation method was the dominant foreign language teaching method in Europe from the 1840s to the 1940s, and a version of it continues to be widely used in some parts of the world, even today. However, even as early as the mid-19th century, theorists were beginning to question the principles behind the grammar-translation method. Changes were beginning to take place. There was a greater demand for ability to speak foreign languages, and various reformers began reconsidering the nature of language and learning. Among these reformers were two Frenchmen, C. Marcel and F. Gouin, and an Englishman, T. Pendergast. Through their separate observations, they concluded that the way that children learned language was relevant to how adults should learn language. Marcel emphasized the importance of understanding meaning in language learning. Pendergast proposed the first structural syllabus. He proposed arranging grammatical structures so that the easiest were taught first. Gouin believed that children learned language through using language for a sequence of related actions. He emphasized presenting each item in context and using gestures to supplement verbal meaning.

Though the ideas of these and other reformers had some influence for a time, they did not become widespread or last long. They were outside of the established educational circles, and the networks of conferences and journals which exist today did not exist then to spread their ideas.

Reforms However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, linguists became interested in the problem of the best way to teach languages. These reformers, who included Henry Sweet of England, Wilhelm Vietor of Germany, and Paul Passy of France, believed that language teaching should be based on scientific knowledge about language, that it should begin with speaking and expand to other skills, that words and sentences should be presented in context, that grammar should be taught inductively, and that translation should, for the most part, be avoided. These ideas spread, and were consolidated in what became known as the Direct Method, the first of the "natural methods." The Direct Method became popular in language schools, but it was not very practical with larger classes or in public schools.

Behaviorism and Language Teaching

Developments in other fields have, at times, had an effect on language teaching. In the field of psychology, behaviorism has had a great effect on language teaching. Various scientists in the early to mid-1900s did experiments with animals, trying to understand how animals learned, and through animals, how humans learned.

One of the most famous of these scientists was Ivan Pavlov. His experiments showed that if he rang a bell before giving food to the dogs he was studying, they would salivate, when they heard the bell, even before the food was presented to them. This, he called, a conditioned response. Pavlov believed that this indicated how animals learned, even in the wild. Pavlov and other studying in fields of animal behavior (including John Watson and B.F. Skinner) came to believe that animal behavior was formed by a series of rewards or punishments. Skinner, in particular, promoted the idea that human behavior could be described using the same model.

In applying his principles to language, Skinner theorized that parents or other caretakers hear a child say something that sounds like a word in their language; they reward the child with praise and attention. The child repeats words and combinations of words that are praised and thus learns language.

Behaviorism, along with applied linguistics, which developed detailed descriptions of the differences between languages, had a great influence on language teaching. Theorists believed that languages were made up of a series of habits, and that if learners could develop all these habits, they would speak the language well. Also, they believed that a contrastive analysis of languages would be invaluable in teaching languages, because points in which the languages were similar would be easy for students, but points in which they were different would be difficult for students. From these theories arose the audio-lingual method. The audio-lingual method is based on using drills for the formation of good language habits. Students are given a stimulus, which they respond to. If their response is correct, it is rewarded, so the habit will be formed; if it is incorrect, it is corrected, so that it will be suppressed.

(Adapted/ Source: (The History of Language Teaching Methodology www.old.ektf.hu/.../MA%20Integrated%20ELT%20M-The%20History%20of%20ELTword )

Gouin and Berlitz - The Direct Method

The last two decades of the nineteenth century ushered in a new age. In his ‘The Art of Learning and Studying Foreign Languages’ (1880), Francois Gouin described his "harrowing" experiences of learning German, which helped him gain insights into the intricacies of language teaching and learning. Living in Hamburg for one year, he attempted to master the German language by dint of memorising a German grammar book and a list of the 248 irregular German verbs, instead of conversing with the natives. Exulting in the security that the grounding in German grammar offered him, he hastened to go to the University to test his knowledge. He could not understand a word! After his failure, he decided to memorise the German roots, but with no success. He went so far as to memorise books, translate Goethe and Schiller, and learn by heart 30,000 words in a dictionary, only to meet with failure. Upon returning to France, Gouin discovered that his three-year-old nephew had managed to become a chatterbox of French - a fact that made him think that the child held the secret to learning a language. Thus, he began observing his nephew and came to the conclusion (arrived at by another researcher a century before him) that language learning is a matter of transforming perceptions into conceptions and then using language to represent these conceptions. Equipped with this knowledge, he devised a teaching method premised upon these insights. It was against this background that the Series Method was created, which taught learners directly a "series" of connected sentences that are easy to understand. For instance,

I stretch out my arm. I take hold of the handle. I turn the handle. I open the door. I pull the door.

Nevertheless, this approach to language learning was short-lived and, only a generation later, gave place to the Direct Method, posited by Charles Berlitz. The basic tenet of Berlitz's method was that second language learning is similar to first language learning. In this light, there should be lots of oral interaction, spontaneous use of the language, no translation, and little if any analysis of grammatical rules and syntactic structures. In short, the principles of the Direct Method were as follows:

· Classroom instruction was conducted in the target language

· There was an inductive approach to grammar

· Only everyday vocabulary was taught

· Concrete vocabulary was taught through pictures and objects, while abstract vocabulary was taught by association of ideas

The Direct Method enjoyed great popularity at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth but it was difficult to use, mainly because of the constraints of budget, time, and classroom size. Yet, after a period of decline, this method has been revived, leading to the emergence of the Audiolingual Method.

The Audiolingual Method

The outbreak of World War II heightened the need for Americans to become orally proficient in the languages of their allies and enemies alike. To this end, bits and pieces of the Direct Method were appropriated in order to form and support this new method, the "Army Method," which came to be known in the 1950s as the Audiolingual Method.

The Audiolingual Method was based on linguistic and psychological theory and one of its main premises was the scientific descriptive analysis of a wide assortment of languages. On the other hand, conditioning and habit-formation models of learning put forward by behaviouristic phychologists were married with the pattern practices of the Audiolingual Method. The following points sum up the characteristics of the method:

· Dependence on mimicry and memorisation of set phrases

· Teaching structural patterns by means of repetitive drills (??Repetitio est mater studiorum??)

· No grammatical explanation

· Learning vocabulary in context

· Use of tapes and visual aids

· Focus on pronunciation

· Immediate reinforcement of correct responses

But its popularity waned after 1964, partly because of Wilga Rivers's exposure of its shortcomings. It fell short of promoting communicative ability as it paid undue attention to memorisation and drilling, while downgrading the role of context and world knowledge in language learning. After all, it was discovered that language was not acquired through a process of habit formation and errors were not necessarily bad or pernicious.

(Adapted/ Source: The History of Language Teaching Methodology www.old.ektf.hu/.../MA%20Integrated%20ELT%20M-The%20History%20of%20ELTword )

(Adapted/ Source: Brown, H. D. (2000) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New York: Longman)

(Adapted/ Source: Richards J. C. and Theodore S. (1999), Approaches and Methods In Language Teaching: A Description and Analysis, Rodgers, Cambridge University Press. pp.1-13)

Topic- 010: Language Teaching Methods from the Mid- to Late-20th Century

In the years following World War II, great changes took place, some of which would eventually influence language teaching and learning. Language diversity greatly increased, so that there were more languages to learn. Expansion of schooling meant that language learning was no longer the prerogative of the elite but something that was necessary for a widening range of people. More opportunities for international travel and business and international social and cultural exchanges increased the need for language learning. As a result, renewed attempts were made in the 1950s and 1960s to 1) use new technology (e.g., tape recorders, radios, TV, and computers) effectively in language teaching, 2) explore new educational patterns (e.g., bilingual education, individualized instruction, and immersion programs), and 3) establish methodological innovations (e.g., the audio-lingual method). However, the hoped-for increase in the effectiveness of language education did not materialize, and some of the theoretical underpinnings of the developments were called into question.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, there has been a variety of theoretical challenges to the audio-lingual method. Linguist Noam Chomsky challenged the behaviorist model of language learning. He proposed a theory called Transformational Generative Grammar, according to which learners do not acquire an endless list of rules but limited set of transformations which can be used over and over again. For example, a sentence is changed from an affirmative to a negative sentence by adding not and the auxiliary verb to, i.e., "I go to New York every week" would be changed to "I do not go to New York every week." With a fairly limited number of these transformations, according to Chomsky, language users can form an unlimited number of sentences.

Other theorists have also proposed ideas that have influenced language teaching. Stephen Krashen, for example, studied the way that children learn language and applied it to adult language learning. He proposed the Input Hypothesis, which states that language is acquired by using comprehensible input (the language that one hears in the environment) which is slightly beyond the learner's present proficiency. Learners use the comprehensible input to deduce rules. Krashen's views on language teaching have given rise to a number of changes in language teaching, including a de-emphasis on the teaching of grammatical rules and a greater emphasis on trying to teach language to adults in the way that children learn language. While Krashen's theories are not universally accepted, they have had an influence.

Developments in various directions have taken place since the early 1970s. There has been developments such as a great emphasis on individualized instruction, more humanistic approaches to language learning, a greater focus on the learner, and greater emphasis on development of communicate, as opposed to merely linguistic, competence. Some "new methods," including the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, and Community Language Learning, have gained followings, and these reflect some of the above trends.

The "Designer" Methods of the 1970s

The Chomskyan revolution in linguistics drew the attention of linguists and language teachers to the "deep structure" of language, while psychologists took account of the affective and interpersonal nature of learning. As a result, new methods were proposed, which attempted to capitalise on the importance of psychological factors in language learning. David Nunan (1989: 97) referred to these methods as "designer" methods, on the grounds that they took a "one-size-fits-all" approach. Let us have a look at two of these "designer" methods.

Suggestopedia

Suggestopedia promised great results if we use our brain power and inner capacities. Lozanov (1979) believed that we are capable of learning much more than we think. Drawing upon Soviet psychological research on yoga and extrasensory perception, he came up with a method for learning that used relaxation as a means of retaining new knowledge and material. It stands to reason that music played a pivotal role in his method. Lozanov and his followers tried to present vocabulary, readings, role-plays and drama with classical music in the background and students sitting in comfortable seats. In this way, students became "suggestible."

Of course, suggestopedia offered valuable insights into the "superlearning" powers of our brain but it was demolished on several fronts. For instance, what happens if our classrooms are bereft of such amenities as comfortable seats and Compact Disk players? Certainly, this method is insightful and constructive and can be practised from time to time, without necessarily having to adhere to all its premises. A relaxed mind is an open mind and it can help a student to feel more confident and, in a sense, pliable.

The Silent Way

The Silent Way rested on cognitive rather than affective arguments, and was characterised by a problem-solving approach to learning. Gattegno (1972) held that it is in learners' best interests to develop independence and autonomy and cooperate with each other in solving language problems. The teacher is supposed to be silent - hence the name of the method - and must disabuse himself of the tendency to explain everything to them.

The Silent Way came in for an onslaught of criticism. More specifically, it was considered very harsh, as the teacher was distant and, in general lines, the classroom environment was not conducive to learning.

Strategies-based instruction

The work of O'Malley and Chamot (1990), and others before and after them, emphasised the importance of style awareness and strategy development in ensuring mastery of a foreign language. In this vein, many textbooks and entire syllabi offered guidelines on constructing strategy-building activities.

Communicative Language Teaching

The need for communication has been relentless, leading to the emergence of the Communicative Language Teaching. Having defined and redefined the construct of communicative competence; having explored the vast array of functions of language that learners are supposed to be able to accomplish; and having probed the nature of styles and nonverbal communication, teachers and researchers are now better equipped to teach (about) communication through actual communication, not merely theorising about it.

At this juncture, we should say that Communicative Language Teaching is not a method; it is an approach, which transcends the boundaries of concrete methods and, concomitantly, techniques. It is a theoretical position about the nature of language and language learning and teaching.

Let us see the basic premises of this approach:

· Focus on all of the components of communicative competence, not only grammatical or linguistic competence. Engaging learners in the pragmatic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes

· Viewing fluency and accuracy as complementary principles underpinning communicative techniques

· Using the language in unrehearsed contexts

In addition, there has been a disillusionment with the whole methods debate, partly due to inconclusiveness of research on methods, and calls for a deeper understanding of the process of language learning itself. Finally, there has been a greater stress on authenticity in language learning, meaning that the activities involved in language learning reflect real-world uses of the language.

Conclusion

Over the centuries, many changes have taken place in language learning, and yet there is evidence that considerations related to language learning have come up again and again through history. No doubt the search for a greater understanding of language learning, and more effective language teaching, will continue.

(Adapted/ Source: Brown, H. D. (2000) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New York: Longman.)

(Adapted/ Source: Richards J. C. and Theodore S. (1999), Approaches and Methods In Language Teaching: A Description and Analysis, Rodgers, Cambridge University Press. pp.1-13)

(Adapted/ Source: Richards J. C. and Theodore S. (1999), Approaches and Methods In Language Teaching: A Description and Analysis, Rodgers, Cambridge University Press. pp.1-13)

Lesson 3

DIFFERENCE IN THEORY APPROACH METHOD TECHNIQUE

Topic- 011: What is a Theory?

Generally speaking, a theory is a set of statements that is developed through a process of continued abstractions. A theory is a generalized statement aimed at explaining a phenomenon. 

It is generally agreed that teachers’ classroom practice is directly or indirectly based on some theory whether or not it is explicitly articulated. Teachers may have gained this crucial theoretical knowledge either through professional education, personal experience, robust common sense, or a combination.

In fact, it has been suggested that there is no substantial difference between common sense and theory, particularly in the field of education. Cameron et al. (1992, pp. 18–19), for instance, asserts that common sense is different from theory “only by the degree of formality and selfconsciousness with which it is invoked. When someone purports to criticize or ‘go beyond’ common sense, they are not putting theory where previously there was none, but replacing one theory with another.”

The most successful teaching techniques are in one way or another, informed by principled theories; do not seem to be in dispute. What have become controversial are questions such as: what constitutes a theory, who constructs a theory, and whose theory counts as theory.

Traditionally, there has been a clear articulated separation between theory and practice. For instance, in the context of L2 education, theory is generally seen to constitute a set of insights and concepts derived from academic disciplines such as general education, linguistic sciences, second language acquisition, cognitive psychology, and information sciences. These and other allied disciplines provide the theoretical bases necessary for the study of language, language learning, language teaching, and language teacher education.

Practice is seen to constitute a set of teaching and learning strategies indicated by the theorist or the syllabus designer or the materials producer, and adopted or adapted by the teacher and the learner in order to jointly accomplish the stated and unstated goals of language learning and teaching in the classroom. Consequently, there is, as mentioned earlier, a corresponding division of labor between the theorist and the teacher: the theorist conceives and constructs knowledge and the teacher understands and applies that knowledge. Thus, the relationship between the theorist and the teacher is not unlike that of the producer and the consumer of a commercial commodity. Such a division of labor is said to have resulted in the creation of a privileged class of theorists and an underprivileged class of practitioners.

Professional Theory and Personal Theory

Well aware of the harmful effects of the artificial division between theory and practice, general educationists correctly affirm that theory and practice should inform each other, and should therefore constitute a unified whole. Their stand on the theory/practice divide is reflected in a distinction they made between a “professional theory” and a “personal theory” of education. Charles O’Hanlon summarizes the distinction in this way:

A professional theory is a theory which is created and perpetuated within the professional culture. It is a theory which is widely known and understood like the developmental stages of Piaget. Professional theories are generally transmitted via teacher/professional training in colleges, polytechnics and universities. Professional theories form the basis of a shared knowledge and understanding about the “culture” of teaching and provide the opportunity to develop discourse on the implicit and explicit educational issues raised by these theoretical perspectives.

A personal theory, on the other hand, is an individual theory unique to each person, which is individually developed through the experience of putting professional theories to the test in the practical situation. How each person interprets and adapts their previous learning, particularly their reading, understanding and identification of professional theories while they are on the job is potentially their own personal theory (O’Hanlon, 1993, pp. 245–6).

Implied in this distinction is the traditional assumption that professional theory belongs to the domain of the theorist and personal theory belongs to the domain of the teacher. Although this approach does not place theory and practice in positions of antithetical polarity, it nevertheless perpetuates the artificial divide between theory and practice and between the theorist’s professional theory and the teacher’s personal theory. Another drawback is that this approach offers only limited possibilities for practicing teachers because they are not empowered to design their personal theories based on their own experiential knowledge; instead, they are encouraged to develop them by understanding, interpreting, and testing the professional theories and ideas constructed by the outside experts (Kumaravadivelu, 1999a).

Critical pedagogists have come out strongly against such an approach. They argue that it merely forces teachers to take orders from established theorists and faithfully execute them, thereby leaving very little room for self-conceptualization and self-construction of truly personal theories. They go on to say that supporters of this teacher-as-implementer approach “exhibit ideological naiveté. They are unable to recognize that the act of selecting problems for teachers to research is an ideological act, an act that trivialize the role of the teacher” (Kincheloe, 1993, pp. 185–6). A huge obstacle to the realization of the kind of flexibility and freedom that critical pedagogists advocate is that the artificial dichotomy between the theorist and the teacher has been institutionalized in the teaching community and that most teachers have been trained to accept the dichotomy as something that naturally goes with the territory.

Teacher’s Theory of Practice

Any serious attempt to help teachers construct their own theory of practice requires a re-examination of the idea of theory and theory making. A distinction that Alexander (1984, 1986) makes between theory as product and theory as process may be useful in this context. Theory as product refers to the content knowledge of one’s discipline; whereas, theory as process refers to the intellectual activity (i.e., the thought process) needed to theorize. Appropriately, Alexander uses the term theorizing to refer to theory as intellectual activity. Theorizing as an intellectual activity, then, is not confined to theorists alone; it is something teachers should be enabled to do as well. According to Alexander, a teacher’s theory of practice should be based on different types of knowledge:

(a) speculative theory (by which he refers to the theory conceptualized by thinkers in the field),

(b) the findings of empirical research, and

(c) the experiential knowledge of practicing teachers. None of these, however, should be presented as the privileged source of knowledge. He advises teachers to approach their own practice with “principles drawn from the consideration of these different types of knowledge” (Alexander 1986, p. 146), and urges teacher-educators “to concentrate less on what teachers should know, and more on how they might think” (ibid., p. 145). In other words, the primary concern of teachers and teacher educators should be the depth of critical thinking rather than the breadth of content knowledge.

Extending Alexander’s notion of teacher theorizing, and drawing from research conducted by others, Donald McIntyre (1993) differentiates three levels of theorizing.

• At the first, technical level, teacher theorizing is concerned with the effective achievement of short-term, classroom-centered instructional goals. In order to achieve that, teachers are content with using ideas generated by outside experts and exercises designed by textbook writers.

• At the second, practical level, teacher theorizing is concerned with the assumptions, values, and consequences with which classroom activities are linked. At this level of practical reflectivity, teachers not only articulate their criteria for developing and evaluating their own practice but also engage in extensive theorizing about the nature of their subjects, their students, and learning/teaching processes.

• At the third, critical or emancipatory level, teacher theorizing is concerned with wider ethical, social, historical, and political issues, including the institutional and societal forces which may constrain the teacher’s freedom of action to design an effective theory of practice.

Incidentally, the three levels correspond roughly to the three types of teacher roles—teachers as passive technicians, reflective practitioners, and transformative intellectuals.Conclusion: Whether teachers characterize their activity as a job or as work, career, occupation, or vocation, they play an unmistakable and unparalleled role in the success of any educational enterprise. Whether they see themselves as passive technicians, reflective practitioners, transformative intellectuals, or as a combination, they are all the time involved in a critical mind engagement. Their success and the satisfaction they derive from it depends to a large extent on the quality of their mind engagement. One way of enhancing the quality of their mind engagement is to recognize the symbiotic relationship between theory, research, and practice, and between professional, personal, and experiential knowledge.

Theory of language

At least three different theoretical views of language and the nature of language proficiency explicitly or implicitly inform current approaches and methods in language teaching. The first, and the most traditional of the three, is the structural view, the view that language is a system of structurally related elements for the coding of meaning. The target of language learning is seen to be the mastery of elements of this system, which are generally defined in terms of phonological units (e.g., phonemes), grammatical units (e.g., clauses, phrases, sentences, grammatical operations).

The second view of language is the functional view, the view that language is a vehicle for the expression of functional meaning. The communicative movement in language teaching subscribes to this view of language. This theory emphasizes the semantic and communicative dimension rather than the grammatical characteristics of language, and leads to a specification and organization of language teaching content by categories of meaning and function rather than by elements of structure and grammar. Wilkins's Notional Syllabuses (1976) is an attempt to spell out the implications of this view of language for syllabus design. A notional syllabus would include not only elements of grammar and lexis but also specify the topics, notions, and concepts the learner needs to communicate about. The English for Specific Purposes ESP movement likewise begins not from a structural theory of language but from a functional account of learner needs (Robinson 1980).

The third view of language can be called as the interactional view. It sees language as a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations and for the performance of social transactions between individuals. Language is seen as a tool for the creation and maintenance of social relations. Areas of inquiry being drawn on in the development of interactional approaches to language teaching include interaction analysis, conversation analysis, and ethnomethodology. Interactional theories focus on the patterns of moves, acts, negotiation, and interaction found in conversational exchanges. Language teaching content, according to this view, may be specified and organized by patterns of exchange and interaction or may be left unspecified, to be shaped by the inclinations of learners as interactors. "Interaction" has been central to theories of second language learning and pedagogy since the 1980s. Rivers (1987) defined the interactive perspective in language education: "Students achieve facility in using a language when their attention is focused on conveying and receiving authentic messages (that is, messages that contain information of interest to both speaker and listener in a situation of importance to both) " (Rivers 1987: 4). The notion of interactivity has also been linked to the teaching of reading and writing as well as listening and speaking skills. Structural, functional, or interactional models of language (or variations on them) provide the axioms and theoretical framework that may motivate a particular teaching method, such as Audiolingualism. But in themselves they are incomplete and need to be complemented by theories of language learning. It is to this dimension that we now turn.

Theory of language learning

Although specific theories of the nature of language may provide the basis for a particular teaching method, other methods derive primarily from a theory of language learning. A learning theory underlying an approach or method responds to two questions: (a) What are the psycholinguistic and cognitive processes involved in language learning? and (b) What are the conditions that need to be met in order for these learning processes to be activated? Learning theories associated with a method at the level of approach may emphasize either one or both of these dimensions. Process-oriented theories build on learning processes, such as habit formation, induction, inferencing, hypothesis testing, and generalization. Condition-oriented theories emphasize the nature of the human and physical context in which language learning takes place.

Stephen D. Krashen's Monitor Model of second language development (1981) is an example of a learning theory on which a method (the Natural Approach) has been built. Monitor theory addresses both the process and the condition dimensions of learning. At the level of process, Krashen distinguishes between acquisition and learning. Acquisition refers to the natural assimilation of language rules through using language for communication. Learning refers to the formal study of language rules and is a conscious process. According to Krashen, however, learning is available only as a "monitor." The monitor is the repository of conscious grammatical knowledge about a language that is learned through formal instruction and that is called upon in the editing of utterances produced through the acquired system. Krashen's theory also addresses the conditions necessary for the process of "acquisition" to take place. Krashen describes these in terms of the type of "input" the learner receives. Input must be comprehensible, slightly above the learner's present level of competence, interesting or relevant, not grammatically sequenced, in sufficient quantity, and experienced in low-aftxiety contexts.

Tracy D. Terrell's Natural Approach (1977) is an example of a method derived primarily from a learning theory rather than from a particular view of language. Although the Natural Approach is based on a learning theory that specifies both processes and conditions, the learning theory underlying such methods as Counseling-Learning and the Silent Way_ addresses primarily the conditions held to be necessary for learning to take place without specifying what the learning processes are presumed to be.

Charles A. Curran in his writings on Counseling-Learning (1972), forexample, focuses primarily on the conditions necessary for successful learning. He believes the atmosphere of the classroom is a crucial factor, and his method seeks to ameliorate the feelings of intimidation and insecurity that many learners experience. James Asher's Total Physical Response (Asher 1977) is likewise a method that derives primarily from learning theory rather than from a theory of the nature of language. Asher's learning theory addresses both the process and the condition aspects of learning. It is based on the belief that child language learning is based on motor activity, on coordinating language with action, and that this should form the basis of adult foreign language teaching. Orchestrating language production and comprehension with body movement and physical actions is thought to provide the conditions for success in language learning. Caleb Gattegno's Silent Way (1972, 1976) is likewise built around a theory of the conditions necessary for successful learning to be realized. Gattegno's writings address learners' needs to feel secure about learning and to assume conscious control of learning. Many of the techniques used in the method are designed to train learners to consciously use their intelligence to heighten learning potential.

There often appear to be natural affinities between certain theories of language and theories of language learning; however, one can imagine different pairings of language theory and learning theory that might work as well as those we observe. The linking of structuralism (a linguistic theory) to-behaviorism (a learning theory) produced Audiolingualism. That particular link was not inevitable, however. Cognitive-code proponents, for example, have attempted to link a more sophisticated model of structuralism to a more mentalistic and less behavioristic brand of learning theory.

At the level of approach, we are concerned with theoretical principles. With respect to language theory, we are concerned with a model of language competence and an account of the basic features of linguistic organization and language use. With respect to learning theory, we are concerned with an account of the central processes of learning and an account of the conditions believed to promote successful language learning. These principles may or may not lead to "a" method. Teachers may, for example, develop their own teaching procedures, informed by a particular view of language and a particular theory of learning. They may constantly revise, vary, and modify teaching/learning procedures on the basis of the performance of the learners and their reactions to instructional practice. A group of teachers holding similar beliefs about language and language learning (i.e., sharing a similar approach) may each implement these principles in different ways. Approach does not specify procedure. Theory does not dictate a particular set of teaching techniques and activities. What links theory with practice (or approach with procedure) is what we have called design.

(Adapted/ Source: Kumaravadivelu B. (2003), Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching, Yale University Press New Haven and London. pp. 5-22).

(Adapted/ Source: Richards J. C. and Theodore S. (1999), Approaches and Methods In Language Teaching: A Description and Analysis, Rodgers, Cambridge University Press. pp. 14-30).

Topic- 012: What is an approach?

According to Edward Anthony (1965): An approach is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language and the nature of language learning and teaching.

When linguists and language specialists sought to improve the quality of language teaching in the late nineteenth century, they often did so by referring to general principles and theories concerning how languages are learned, how knowledge of language is represented and organized in memory, or how language itself is structured. The early applied linguists, such as Henry Sweet (1845-1912), Otto Jespersen (1860-1943), and Harold Palmer (1877-1949), elaborated principles and theoretically accountable approaches to the design of language teaching programs, courses, and materials; though many of the specific practical details were left to be worked out by others. They sought a rational answer to questions such as those regarding principles for the selection and sequencing of vocabulary and grammar, though none of these applied linguists saw in any existing method. the ideal embodiment of their ideas.

In describing methods, the difference between a philosophy of language teaching at the level of theory and principles, and a set of derived procedures for teaching a language, is central. In an attempt to clarify this difference, a scheme was proposed by the American applied linguist Ed-ward Anthony in 1963. He identified three levels of conceptualization and organization, which he termed approach, method, and technique.

The arrangement is hierarchical. The organizational key is that techniques carry out a method which is consistent with an approach. An approach is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning. An approach is axiomatic. It describes the nature of the subject matter to be taught.

Method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of which contradicts, and all of which is based upon, the selected approach. An approach is axiomatic, a method is procedural. Within one approach, there can be many methods.

According to Anthony's model, approach is the level at which assumptions and beliefs about language and language learning are specified; method is the level at which theory is put into practice and at which choices are made about the particular skills to be taught, the content to be taught, and the order in which the content will be presented; technique is the level at which classroom procedures are described.

Anthony's model serves as a useful way of distinguishing between different degrees of abstraction and specificity found in different language teaching proposals. Thus we can see that the proposals of the Reform Movement were at the level of approach and that the Direct Method is one method derived from this approach. The so-called Reading Method, which evolved as a result of the Coleman Report, should really be described in the plural - reading methods - since a number of different ways of implementing a reading approach have been developed.

(Adapted/ Source: Kumaravadivelu B. (2003), Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching, Yale University Press New Haven and London. pp. 5-22)

(Adapted/ Source: Richards J. C. and Theodore S. (1999), Approaches and Methods In Language Teaching: A Description and Analysis, Rodgers, Cambridge University Press. pp. 14-30)

Topic- 013: What is a method/methodology?

The Concept of Method: A core course in Theory and Practice of Methods, with the same or a different title, is an integral part of language teacher education programs all over the world. A survey of 120 teacher education programs in Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in the United States, for instance, shows that the Methods course functions as the primary vehicle for the development of basic knowledge and skill in the prospective teacher (Grosse, 1991). The survey also shows that specific classroom techniques receive “the greatest amount of attention and time in the methods courses�